I played both Seiken Densetsu 3 and Tales of Phantasia for the SNES and I think both are cool in their own way. While Seiken Densetsu was more of a top-down battle system, Tales had a side-scroller type system. In both games you can only control the hero, and the rest of the party are controlled by AI (although I heard that in Seiken Densetsu 3, another player can play the second character that is chosen with a joypad)...I picked up one a few days ago - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for the GBA. It's a turn-based strategy RPG - the problem is, that the battle system's somewhat slow. Otherwise the plot is quite interesting.

The Tales series can play the second character with joypad too!But is a hide item to open this option.